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Sunday, April 7, 2013

The Case was too good to go forward -- Corruption and the Courts

In this weekends news is an article that shows just how bad things have gotten for the American Worker. Workers were trying to get a class action suit going based on evidence that our major IT companies were "allegedly forming an illegal cartel to tamp down workers' wages and prevent the loss of their best engineers during a multiyear conspiracy broken up by government regulators."1. The Judge Ruled:

This despite the fact that "The allegations will be more difficult to pursue if they can't be united in a single lawsuit. Koh, though, will allow the workers' lawyers to submit additional evidence that they have been collecting to persuade her that the lawsuit still merits class certification." So, all is not lost. But this case illustrates the difficulty of dealing with a system that is increasingly plutocratic and oligarchic, and where the oligarchs use their partial monopolies to oppress people instead of to uphold their fiduciary responsibilities and trust obligations over resources.

Workers are having trouble, because our wealthier "liberal" allies go along with the right on worker issues. From Rahm Emmanual to outright righties, we see that our wealthier brothers and sisters are making "hard decisions" on the backs of 99% of us, while many of them (not including Rahm yet) are hiding money in offshore banks. And there is no shared sacrifice. This is a system that is oppressive to most of us and getting more so. And we have to convince people to do the right thing instead. I hope the judge hasn't killed this lawsuit.